> "Ultraprocessed foods are defined as "industrial formulations of food substances (oils, fats, sugars, starch, and protein isolates) that contain little or no whole foods and typically include flavorings, colorings, emulsifiers, and other cosmetic additives," according to the study.
But if I have a package that says it is whole grain or whatever, how do I know if it is or isn't ultraprocessed or just, you know, regular processed?
If I chop my potatoes before boiling them, is that processing? If not, which steps in cooking count as "processing"? And how many of those steps need to be included for the food to be "ultraprocessed"? How can I avoid accidentally "ultraprocessing" my food when I cook it at home?
This whole thread reads like pedantry for the sake of it.
I think the name is lousy, but I think the reason is that things like xantham gum and soy lecithin are there to provide texture. For example, low-fat yogurt has some of these in it because if you take the fat out, it doesn't have the same texture (probably isn't even solid), so you need to do some processing to get it to the same place. See [1] for a summary.
There's a podcast on the BBC where a doctor tries to get his twin doctor brother of ultra-processed food. Unfortunately, most of the episodes involve emotional issues, but they do have a few minutes of interviews with major researchers. [3] is sort of a summary.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/what_is_ultra-processed_...
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017tcz/episodes/player
1. Don't buy meals; buy ingredients.
2. The longer the list of ingredients, the more likely it is to be "highly" processed
3. The way you avoid 'highly' processed stuff is to avoid processing altogether. Buy corn you have to husk, meat you have to cut, fish you have to filet, wine you have to uncork, bread you have to slice, etc.
Ok, this is just silly. Cutting your own meat doesn't make it healthier than having a butcher cut it for you. Box wine is no more or less healthy than bottled wine with a cork. Slicing bread yourself doesn't change its health contents.
Its statements like these that make the whole argument seem like nonsense.
Obvious exceptions apply, such as going to the butcher, as you have astutely observed. These do not invalidate the rule-of-thumb.
Frozen corn vs whole corn? Were you planning to eat the cob? Does it help my diet to cut corn kernels off manually? How?
Meat you have to cut? Maybe you're thinking hot dogs here, my first thought was ground beef. Does breaking out the meat grinder, and cleaning it, help me eat right? How?
Fish you have to filet? Can I just buy the filets? Or is it 100% necessary that fish skin rot in my garbage can.
Boxed wine? Generally I consider corked wine undrinkable, and I struggle to think what other contribution a cork per se can offer to wine.
Sliced bread? I mean. Look it's a really bad set of rules so I'll have mercy here, the kind of bread which is available only sliced is not great for you, so at least here I can infer your meaning.
Not that it matters because the #1 source of extra pounds on my waist is whole loaves of sourdough bread. I slice them myself.
It's a heuristic.
Stay off the granola bar with high fructose corn syrup.
It is more important to avoid the bad anti-nutrients than to eat a particular food for a certain "miracle" nutrient.
This can't be true in an absolute sense. There is no way that adding a single drop of high fructose corn syrup to a meal would completely ruin any health benefits of the rest of the meal. There is also no way that adding a bit of corn syrup to a plate of broccoli would be equally as unhealthy for you as a bowl of lucky charms. Obviously the mix of ingredients matters.
Where do you get the idea that a single bad ingredient ruins the entire food?
Would a granola bar sweetened with the exact same number of sucrose/fructose molecules from organic coconut sugar (or palm sugar, or date juice, etc) be any more healthy?
I currently do not believe it would be. Sugar is sugar. But I'm not 100% sure.
I wish they just showed a graph of "decline in cognition" vs "percentage of calories from processed foods" instead of making me try to parse the relevant information out of sentences like that. What 10% of my calories come from processed foods? I'm I completely safe or is the effect linear in percentage of calories or what?
That describes nearly all modern cultivars of fruits/vegetables.
"Ultra-processed foods usually contain ingredients that you wouldn’t add when cooking homemade food. You may not recognise the names of these ingredients as many will be chemicals, colourings, sweeteners and preservatives."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/what_is_ultra-processed_...
processed foods only comes in a box, bag, or can; that is, most of the center aisles in a grocery store. buy mostly fruits, vegetables, meats, seafood, and dairy--things found on the outer ring of the store. if you want grains or beans, prefer buying the grains/beans directly, not the boxed form of them.